Phish at Madison Square Garden

Trey Anastasio

Phish formed as Blackwood Convention in 1983 by four college students in Burlington, Vermont, but the band initially had a rocky start. After only a couple of shows, guitarist/vocalist Trey Anastasio was suspended from school following a prank he had pulled with a friend, putting the band on hiatus for about a year. During the suspension, Anastasio returned to his hometown of Princeton, New Jersey, and wrote songs. He returned to Burlington in late 1984 and resumed playing with Blackwood Convention, soon renamed Phish. The jam band's regional quickly spread throughout New England, eventually going global, by word of mouth, the exchange of live recordings, and sales of over 8 million albums and DVDs. The current line-up—Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, drummer Jon Fishman, and keyboardist Page McConnell—performed together for 15 years before going on hiatus in 2000. The band resumed touring in 2002, disbanded in 2004, and reunited in 2009. The band's 16th and most recent studio album is 2016's Big Boat.

Bigger than Phish's return to Madison Square Garden tonight (the band's 57th concert there, and the first in a series of four that concludes on New Year's Eve) was the fan culture that absorbed more than listened to the music. Moments of improvisational greatness were often followed by extended shoegaze non-events, and yet the sea of swaying bodies throughout the arena never missed a beat. When the stage lights brightened, the cheering soared and glow sticks sailed through the air. The set consisted of mostly songs from the 1990s, allowing for fresh jams to fill the extensive spaces between lyrics. The first set was noticeably mellower than the second, which peaked several times on high-energy summits. The band played 21 songs over the course of three hours, and with a late start and an intermission, the happy audience left about midnight, many ready to return for more the following three nights.

Visit Phish at www.phish.com.

Setlist

Set 1:

1. We Are Come to Outlive Our Brains
2. Martian Monster
3. Axilla > Free
4. The Wedge
5. Meat
6. Ghost > Sparkle
7. If I Could
8. Maze
9. Walls of the Cave

Set 2:

1. Set Your Soul Free  (Trey Anastasio song)> Swept Away > Steep
2. The Final Hurrah
3. Fuego > Shade > Bathtub Gin (with snippet of The Little Drummer Boy) > Possum

Encore:

1. Bouncing around the Room
2. Slave to the Traffic Light